I'm preparing to invest in one or the other... what do you suggest?

I'm tired of this fucking dial-up crap.

Well... I ain't got all fucking day. Get to suggesting!!!

Anything that makes it harder for you to be here.

dsl is the way to go!


[This message was edited Wed Nov 12 10:35:06 PST 2003 by sinisterpentatonic]

I was joking too.

althom said:

althom said:

LIAR!!!



Okay... I was joking too.

t-1 rocks!!!

June7 said:

When I first went broadband (not counting my years living in dorms), I chose DSL for these reasons:

1) With a DSL line, I have a certain amount of bandwidth allocated exclusively to me (1.5 MB down, 768K up). With a cable modem, I'd be sharing bandwidth with my neighbors, most of whom are young professionals and students, and likely use the Internet a great deal.

2) My DSL provider, speakeasy.net, offers things that aren't available with most cable modem providers (or even other DSL providers), such as static IP addresses, server-friendliness, and liberal usage policies.

However, I'm moving soon to another apartment, and I've decided to dump my landline. No landline means no DSL, so I'll be switching to a cable modem.

matt said:

Damn, never thought about that, I did have some trouble with the cable modem when I lived in an apartment, I didn't know that was the reason. The majority of the time "when it was working" it kicked ass an the speed was much superiour to dsl.

I use a cable modem and I find it's a LOT faster if I use it at times when my neighbors are not likely to be up and doing stuff (on their computers, anyway).

On weekends it kinda lags, but during the week it runs pretty good.

Call you phone company and ask them how far you are from the C.O. If you are within 14,000ft go with DSL. You will get top speed. You will be glad. And you will get it over the phone line. Add in a router and you can wire up multiple computers in the house off of the same dsl line.

If your cable goes out all the time, like mine did, go with DSL.

I like my cable modem better than I liked my DSL

CtheUncanny said:

Theoretically DSL is the better of the two, however there are exceptions. Distance and quality of the phone line are crucial.

I'm very content with my 8Mbit/1Mbit line. My advice would be, make sure that either one you go for has a trial period.

So, when you have DSL, are you required to get another phone line? I know with the cable modem, you need to get the modem... sometimes the service provides one for you when you sign up...

Yahoo! DSL is going for $26.95 a month...

Cable modem usually goes for over $45 to $50 bucks.

Monetarily, I'm leaning towards the DSL...

Cthe... you say with a router I can add additional computers? How so?

Thanks to all y'all who've responded with the post in mind... Glares to althom!!!

June7 said:

A router gives you more USB ports to hook other computers into the network that will work off of the one modem, which also connects to the router

June7 said:

No, it uses the same line, just different frequencies as speach, which is why you get a signal splitter.

analbolic said:

But note that you still need a landline. If you want to go all-wireless, which I'm about to do, that's a problem.

matt said:

Yikes!
Sounds expensive... Is it?

June7 said:

Nah... you can always find a cable modem for free some place when you sign up with a 1yr agreement. I work for an electronic retailer and we have one free basically every week. I have cable myself and I couldn't stand it until I called the cable company and had them come out and boost my signal. Another thing I did was get a signal amplifier/ splitter which usually retails around $15 or so and that helped too. Oh another thing, if your cable company sucks and it typical, they will use RG59 cable, I replaced mine with RG6 coaxial cable for signal reasons. All of that helped and you can just buy the cheap RG6 coax. 25 feet should be like $10. Anyway, those are things y ou can do for cable signal so you don't get so much lag or even booted offline because your signal is too low!

June7 said:

First you usually don't need an extra phone line. Dsl can be sent on top of the line you already have. All you will need is a filter on each phone you use on that number(makes for an easy install).
Second, go to bestbuy and buy a cheap dsl linksys router(around $50.00 or less). It will show instrutions on how to use up to four different computers on one dsl line. If you are at top speed, you can run two computers at the same time on the router and still get great speed(much faster than dialup).

matt said:

You can have dsl without a landline(hardwired phonenumber).
I install them all the time. Covad does them for sure.

Thanks guys...

This has turned out to be a very informative and productive thread.

What went wrong?

Cable, that is what I have. It is faster too.

Oh yeah... another thing. Does DSL require a dish?

June7 said:

nope




My theory on the cable vs. dsl is 2 call ur cable company & ask how many ppl in ur area have it(not specific number,just alot or a few) if it's alot then DEFFINATELY go with DSL.

CtheUncanny said:

For residential installations?

Cable can be shit, it depends on the contention ratios and the amount of people in your neighbourhood also on cable.

ADSL is easy because it uses standard twisted copper pair, on your existing phone line. It doesn't have a great upstream transfer rate, but it is adequate for most people.

Really, unless you have seriously high requirements, most home users would be fine with either, because the sort of traffic they generate is very "bursty" anyway - just web, email etc. If you plan on downloading massive ISOs every night then sure, you'd have a case for going to 2mbit cable or something, but most people don't.

In conclusion, get whatever is cheapest and easiest

I'm a gamer so latency is what matters to me... my ADSL connection is quite adequate. My home network is totally wireless too and it is still more than fast enough for my net usage, and I'm a complete geek. So I doubt many home users would need more than the bog-standard half-meg ADSL.

Ian

I agree with ian... cable depends on the number of people in your neighborhood. It can be slow or busy if too many people are connected around you, which sucks. DSL is great, I recommend it highly

Natsume said:

:drunk: